- Research famous or successful people with a disability similar to yours. Find out what their disabilities are, what their strengths are, what their challenges are, how they became successful and some ways they compensate for or go around their disability. Get started.
- Think about how you would define disability and write a few sentences to summarize your thoughts. Then ask one or two friends to do the same thing. Compare your answers and then review the federal definition of disability. How are they similar? How are they different?
- Read the documentation of your disability. If you can’t find it, ask your special education teacher or IEP team for a copy of your documentation. After you have a copy of your documentation:
- Highlight your strengths in green and write them out in a bulleted list.
- Highlight the areas that present a challenge for you in yellow and write them out in a bulleted list.
- Meet with a professional, your teacher or your parent to be sure you understand your strengths and how your disability affects your abilities.
- Write down some ideas for using your strengths to overcome or go around the challenges you have in school.
- Put the documentation and your ideas in your portfolio.
- Pretend you are explaining your disability to your friend or another nonjudgmental, supportive person. What words would you use that would be easy to understand? In one paragraph, summarize your explanation and your feelings about having a disability. Or record your summary into a tape or digital recorder.
- Create a chart of the challenges you face and then come up with some more positive ways of thinking about those challenges.
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